(Part 2)     

Train your children with abiding persuasion on your mind that much depends upon you.

Grace is the strongest of all principles. See what a revolution grace effects when it comes into the heart of an old sinner. Nature too is very strong. See how it struggles against the things of the kingdom of God. But after nature and grace undoubtedly there is nothing more powerful than education.

Early habits (if I may so speak) are everything with us, under God. We are made what we are by training. Our character takes the form of that mould into which our first years are cast. We depend in a vast measure on those who bring us up. We get from them a taste, a colour, a bias which clings to us more or less all our lives. We catch the language of our mothers or our nurses, and learnt to speak it almost insensibly, and unquestionably we catch something of their manners, ways and mind at the same time. Time only will show, I suspect, how much we all owe to early impressions, and how many things in us may be traced up to seeds shown in the days of our very infancy by those who were about us.

And all this is one of God's merciful arrangements. He gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moist clay; He gives them a disposition at the starting point of life to believe what you tell them and to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He gives you, in short, a golden opportunity for doing them good. See that the opportunity be not neglected and thrown away.

Beware of miserable delusion into which some have fallen: – that parents can do nothing for their children, that you must leave them alone, wait for grace, and sit still. These persons have wishes for their children in Balaam's fashion - they would like them to die the death of the righteous, but they go no further; they desire much, and have nothing. And the devil rejoices to see such reasoning, just as he always does over everything which seems to excuse indolence, or to encourage neglect of means.

I know that you cannot convert your child; I know well that they who are born again are born, not of the will of man, but of God. But I know also that God says expressly: "Train up a child in the way he should go", and that He never laid a command on man that He would not give man grace to perform. And I know that our duty is not to stand still and dispute, but to go forward and obey. Fill the water pots with water, and we may safely leave it with the Lord to turn the water into wine.

This Page Title – A Sermon for Parents (Part Two) by J. C. Ryle The Wicket Gate Magazine "A Continuing Witness". Internet Edition number 52 – placed on line January 2005 Magazine web address – www.wicketgate.co.uk